Text input system such as predictive virtual keyboards, predictive speech input systems and others are increasingly used to enter information into electronic devices and computing systems. Where electronic devices have a small form factor it can be burdensome for users to manually type in text using virtual keyboards. Where speech input is difficult due to background environment noise and/or the need to avoid disturbing others it is difficult to speak individual data items for input. Often mistakes are made in the text input process such as when a user manually presses the wrong keys or speaks indistinctly when spelling out a word.
Text input systems which use predictive technology to predict candidate next text input items are increasingly available. These include predictive virtual keyboards and other text input systems which offer candidate next text items, such as words, phrases, sentences, emoji, images, stickers, emoticons and others for the user to select. The user can then give a single input action such as a speech input, touch input or other modality of input to input the candidate text item.
Text input systems using predictive technology typically autocomplete or autocorrect text items using the predicted candidates. This leads to problems where the end result is not what the user intended. In that case the user has increased work and burden to correct the autocompleted or autocorrected text items and then to manually correctly enter the intended text item.
The embodiments described below are not limited to implementations which solve any or all of the disadvantages of known text input systems.